The Russian stock market fell 2% after the news of Biden’s permission to deeply attack Russia

The RTS and Moscow Stock Exchange indices began trading with a drop of 1.85% to 2,687.45 and 846.63 points, respectively. Subsequently, the pace of decline slowed down and the market recovered a little from the fall: at the time of this publication (13:39 Moscow time), the Moscow Stock Exchange index was 2,704.82 points (-1 .72% per day), the RTS index was 852.17 points. (-1.25% per day).

The sharpest fall was suffered by Transneft preferred shares, which lost 7.55% and were trading at 1,242 rubles. The share quotes of Gazprom (-3.12%), Yandex (-1.85%), Magnit (-1.89%), Aeroflot (-3.12%), Severstal “(-2, 51%) and Ozon bonds (-3.28%).

Only shares of the gold mining company Polyus showed slight growth. At the time of this publication, they cost 14,492 rubles, with a price increase of 0.88%.

A strong market reaction is associated with the risk of geopolitical escalation, writes Interfax. Earlier, a wide resonance was caused by the New York Times’ publication that Biden allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to launch ATACMS tactical missile strikes in the Kursk region with the potential to expand the zone to the entire European part of Russia.

The White House and the US embassy in Russia declined to comment.

Commenting on the NYT report, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said such US permission would be “a qualitatively new round of tension.” <...> and the participation of the United States in this conflict.